Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God
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Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802862907 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 11/03/2008 |
| Pages: | 259 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.90(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.70(d) |
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UNLOCKING ROMANS
Resurrection and the Justification of GodBy J. R. Daniel Kirk
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2008 J. R. Daniel KirkAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6290-7
Chapter One
Romans under Lock and Key?
Paul the Jew and the God of Israel
"It's about God, stupid." Such a reminder is always pertinent as we embark on a study of Scripture, especially a text as much mooted as the apostle Paul's letter to Rome. For all the sundry rabbit trails and byways that New Testament scholars travel, the subject matter itself continually points the journey back to God. But even to agree to this much is to beg a host of questions about the topic of Scripture. Influenced as it has been by the Greek philosophical tradition, the church throughout the centuries has often articulated an understanding of God under heavy influence from Plato's god of ideal form and perfect moral goodness and from Aristotle's unmoved mover. We thus find Augustine asking, "What, then, are you, O my God?" and giving a list of attributes that includes "Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent ... unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old." In the medieval period, Anselm's Proslogion seeks to prove the existence of a God whose definition is of the same ilk: "that being greater than which cannot be conceived." Centuries later, we find the British Reformed tradition giving this definition of God: "What is God? God is a spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 4). Not only do these Christian definitions, like their Greek philosophical counterparts, all focus on a g/God who is wholly other, they also define God in universal terms without reference to the story of Israel.
In the Scriptures of Israel, however, God's identity is inseparable from a particular people and from certain actions performed on behalf of that people. God is not known in universal abstract qualities but in limiting and particular actions. The question in the Scriptures seems to be less What is God? but rather Who is God? or perhaps Which God? The God of Israel is known through that God's commitment to and actions among a particular people. This is the God of the covenants with the fathers: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whose name is YHWH (e.g., Gen 32:9; Exod 3:6, 15, 16; 4:5; Deut 1:11, 21; 4:1; 6:3). The God of Israel is the one who has acted to redeem a people for himself; their God is YHWH who brought a people out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Exod 20:2). Because of these identifications with Israel in covenant and redemption, God is named as the God of a particular people — the God of the Hebrews (e.g., Exod 5:3; 7:16; 9:1; 1 Sam 4:6-7), the God of Israel (e.g., Exod 5:1; Num 16:9; Josh 7:19-20). Unlike the Greek counterparts, Jewish definitions of God look to the sphere of the particular and enmesh the identity of God within the scandalously singular notion of election. The God of Israel's Scriptures is the God who, though Lord over all things, has chosen to disclose himself and make his name known to the world through one particular people. In this choosing he bound himself in covenant and promised that this people would be the epicenter both of YHWH's self-disclosure and of this God's blessings to humanity.
No question is more central for the study of Paul than to determine at the outset which God we expect to find as the topic of his letters. As our representatives above demonstrate from ancient, medieval, and post-Reformation church history, it is not only the seed of Marcion which has struggled with the earthy, this-worldly identity of God as depicted in the OT. The dehistoricizing of the identity of God in the Christian tradition makes it a smaller step than might otherwise seem to be the case from the God of catholic Christianity to the God of nineteenth-century liberalism — the latter being the universal Father presiding over a universal fraternity of humanity.
And at the birth of Protestantism itself, an ethically abstract conception of God, insufficiently grounded in the identity of God as the God of Israel, sparked a reading of Romans which kindled the flame of the Protestant Reformation. It also blazed a trail for reading Romans which was followed for hundreds of years. Martin Luther's "tower experience" grew, in part, from the decontextualization of two related themes in Romans. The first is the notion of "law" as ethical standard. While Luther does well, in his preface to Romans, to comment on the need for heart disposition and external action to be combined, he never questions the identification of "law" as a reference to transhistorical norms required by God and law as a reference to the historically instantiated code that Paul says comes only at a particular point in the story of Israel. Related to this is the connotation of God as righteous. The revelation of the righteousness of God, declared in Rom 1:17 to be the result of the gospel, was loathsome to Luther because it depicted God as the judge who condemned or pardoned on the basis of adherence to that transhistorical law. Loathing turned to love when, in that tower, Luther found in Rom 1:17 a new exposition of the phrase "righteousness of God," one in which righteousness comes not from a principle of doing (with the heart), but from the altogether passive act of faith. Righteousness is an ethical quality of God (the echoes of Plato are important here), transferred ("imputed") to the believer. Calvin would follow suit and read Rom 1:17 as indicating the bestowal of God's own righteousness on the believer. Without a doubt, Luther's conception of God was deeply formed by his extensive knowledge of Scripture. But it was insufficiently informed by the particularity of the God who works in the story of Israel, who has committed himself to the salvation of that people, and whose law and righteousness find their definition within that story. Luther was therefore burdened with a "righteousness of God" that was less likely to come from the pen of Paul than from the meditations of Paul's philosophical contemporaries. Although Luther's reading of Romans was a powerful and helpful application of the epistle to himself and to the church community of which he was a part, it hinged on an understanding of "the righteous God" that we must, in the end, leave behind. In giving up on this set of readings that has played so powerful a role in the western exegetical tradition, we are left searching for a different key for unlocking Romans.
The beginning of our quest comes when we take the contextualized identity of YHWH as "the God of Israel" and "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" with utmost seriousness. Do this, and two points immediately stand out: (1) the righteousness of God's action is inseparable from his actions and dispositions toward this particular group of people, and (2) in Romans Paul is wrestling mightily with this people's non-embrace of the gospel. If the God of Israel has acted to save his people, but Israel is not participating in that salvation, then in what respect can this God be said to be righteous? Richard Hays has led the way in recent years in reading Romans within a framework in which Paul's God is recognized as the God whose faithfulness to Israel is inseparable from his righteousness. Hays made his initial argument based on Paul's use of the phrase "God's righteousness" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) in Rom 3:5. There, it stands in grammatical and substantive parallel with God's faithfulness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 3:3) and God's truthfulness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 3:7). Hays concludes that "all three serve to affirm that God makes his integrity known through his active faithkeeping." God's righteousness is not a static attribute, but one "manifested in God's saving activity," actions performed in fidelity to God's covenants with Israel. After arguing that not only 3:1-8 but also 3:9-20 are devoted to "silencing of protests against God's justice," Hays turns to Paul's citation of Ps 143:2 ("No flesh will be justified before him"). That Psalm itself depicts God's righteousness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and faithfulness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) manifesting themselves through God's saving power. Thus, when Paul goes on to say that the righteousness of God ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) has now appeared, witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, we are right to understand this righteousness as God's saving power. Such salvation is brought about in keeping with God's fidelity to his covenant promises.
Hays is surely correct — not only is God's righteousness to be understood in terms of the saving activity of God, but that saving activity is also bound to a particular people (Israel) and a particular action in history (the death and resurrection of Jesus). This is, indeed, the watershed of the Sanders revolution in New Testament studies, from which there is no going back. The definitions not only of God and righteousness but also of faith, grace, works, and law can never again be read as statements about generalities and principles or abstract human proclivities, but must be understood as particulars that are tied to YHWH's dealings with Israel.
Battling over Romans
The God of the Particulars
Once we have allowed the particularity of Israel's story to contextualize the identity of God and the quality of God's righteousness, we are forced to reconsider Romans as a whole. We are pressed in this direction if for no other reason than that Rom 1:16-17 has widely been viewed as the thesis statement of the letter. Although we will argue that this is not the most natural place to look for the key to unlocking the letter, the summative nature of these two verses is undeniable. Once we acknowledge their summary function and recognize the weight they have borne in commentators' reading of the letter, the importance of how we conceptualize God and God's righteousness immediately comes to the fore. These verses read, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek. For the righteousness of God ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) is revealed in it by faith unto faith, just as it is written, 'The one who is righteous by faith will live.'" Is the righteousness revealed in Paul's gospel a divine ethical quality? Or is it God's saving activity in faithful adherence to his covenants with Israel?
We can move through Rom 1:16-17, posing a series of questions which will be answered differently depending on whether we view God as the one whose identity is enshrined in abstract qualities or as the one whose identity is enacted in the Scriptures of Israel. Is the shame that Paul denies an indication that he has overcome a natural human inclination to be ashamed at an unimpressive message? Or does Paul claim to eschew shame in echo of Israel's confident claims that YHWH will act for Israel's salvation and thereby validate this people's confidence in its God? Is the power of God unto salvation conceptualized as God's ability to overcome human hearts that are all dead in sin? Or should we see it in the context of such claims as those made in Psalm 143 (see above) that God's power for salvation is closely knit to God's covenant commitments to deliver Israel? Is Paul's assertion that the gospel is to Jew first and also to the Greek simply a statement of chronological priority (or less)? Or is the true priority of Israel a theological necessity for the God whom Paul proclaims? Is the declaration of a gospel going out by faith for faith an indication that God transfers his own character trait of righteousness to a person who remains utterly passive? Or does Paul here boldly affirm that the death and resurrection of Jesus are the surprising means by which God puts on display his covenant faithfulness in acting to deliver Israel?
This series of either/or questions invites a further, overarching question: What is the driving question in Romans? Is it "How do I find a gracious God?" or "How can this message about Jesus be the message about the saving faithfulness of Israel's God?" And, in asking such questions that call into question a centuries-old tradition of reading this letter, we are pressed with what is perhaps the most important question of all: How do we know, indeed, how can we know that we have adopted the better reading?
We will side with the particularists in our study, arguing that the specific identity of God as the God of Israel entails a recognition that the standards of judging God's actions (i.e., for determining whether or not God is righteous) are themselves determined by the Scriptures of Israel. And we will argue that this view can be adopted with confidence based on the complementary grounds of epistolary and rhetorical analysis (see chapter 3 below). Both ancient rhetoric and ancient letter writing followed certain conventions. In both the keeping and the breaking of these conventions, persons wishing to persuade their audiences signal to them the subject matter at hand and the position to be argued. As we will show in more detail below, applying either approach to Romans leads to the same conclusion: Paul declares his intentions and themes in Rom 1:1-7. There we will see that Paul is concerned to tie his apostolate to a gospel that finds its validation as the outworking of God's faithfulness to the promises made in Scripture (1:2). This becomes the context within which God's righteousness is assessed. That gospel message, in turn, is given a highly contextualized, earthy content: It is about the seed of David and the resurrected Christ (1:3-4). The Christ event shows forth God's fidelity to Scripture and to the people of Israel. In Romans, the resurrection of Jesus becomes Paul's key for demonstrating that the promises contained in the Scriptures have been fulfilled in the Christ event. Once we recognize that the gospel is couched in terms of the scripturally-attested resurrection of Jesus, we have the map we need for finding our way through Romans. As this study will demonstrate, resurrection is the most pervasive theme of the letter and it functions throughout as a hermeneutical key for reinterpreting the Scriptures and stories of Israel. Because Paul's God is the God of particulars, the God whose righteousness is tied to a particular story in which God has promised to act in a particular way and to bless a particular people, Paul must show that his gospel message makes sense as the fulfillment of that God's actions fulfilling precisely those promises and blessing that particular people.
Apostle to the Gentiles
All this emphasis on the Jewishness of Paul's God and Paul's message brings us immediately to the counterpoint. Paul's apostolate is inseparably tied to a non-Jewish target group. Paul means to bring about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 1:5). And now we are on the cusp of what is perhaps the driving claim of the letter. This inclusion of the Gentiles is an inseparable part of what God must do for his name's sake ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 1:5). Within that particular story of God's fidelity to his covenant promises to Israel, Paul intends to highlight a subplot which demands that God's great and consummate act of salvation include Gentiles. Both what it means for God to be faithful to God's people and what it means to be faithful to God will find expression in Paul's reading of the Scriptures of Israel as finding their fulfillment in the resurrection of Jesus.
The question of how much weight to place on this facet of the letter is a major dividing line in current readings of Romans. Is the inclusion of the Gentiles, which is an issue in the letter opening of 1:1-7, in the so-called thesis statement of 1:16-17, in the discussion of the final judgment in ch. 2, in the exposition of the Abraham narrative in ch. 4, in the discussion of Israel's plight in chs. 9–11, and in the instructions to the church in chs. 14–15, an ancillary concern, or does it strike at the heart of the letter? To even ask whether something is of utmost importance that appears in the letter opening, the verses that have been called the thesis statement, and the verses often pointed to as the summary statement (15:7-13) is to answer the question. Any comprehensive account of Romans must give due attention to Paul's apostolic mission to the Gentiles and how this fits into the story of Israel's God. As we allow the resurrection of Jesus to guide our steps through the letter, we will find that the Gentile mission is a frequent traveling companion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from UNLOCKING ROMANS by J. R. Daniel Kirk Copyright © 2008 by J. R. Daniel Kirk. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
PREFACE....................ixABBREVIATIONS....................xi
1. Romans under Lock and Key?....................1
2. Functions of Resurrection in Early Judaism....................14
3. Resurrection, Messiah, and the Justification of God Romans 1:1-7 and 15:12....................33
4. Resurrection and the Promise of Abraham Romans 4:13-25....................56
5. Resurrection and Final Salvation Romans 5:9-10....................84
6. Resurrection and Mosaic Law (I) Romans 5:12–8:11....................98
7. Resurrection and New Creation Romans 8:12-39....................132
8. Resurrection and Mosaic Law (II)....................161
9. Resurrection and the Future of Israel Romans 11:15....................181
10. Resurrection and the Lord of the Church Romans 13:8-14 and 14:1-9....................194
11. Reading with the Apostle....................206
INDEX OF NAMES....................235
INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES....................237